6 Best Office Phone Systems

As a business owner, one of your top priorities is communication. You absolutely have to make sure that you and your employees have a clear, solid, and secure telephone system.

Luckily for you, today I am reviewing the top business phones on the market and picking the top 8 that you should have your eye on in 2019.

As you read through this article and check out a few of the phones I’ve chosen, you will probably notice that a lot of them have actually been around for several years. No, this isn’t a mistake.

If a telephone model has been able to withstand the test of time, that is noteworthy. I took the time to compare some of the older business phone solutions to the newer ones. They really held up well against the newcomers!

Also, not every phone covered here is listed as a series. This is also for good reason. If the entire series of devices just happened to be that awesome, they have been listed here as a whole.

Ready to dive in?

Best Small Office Phone System: A Few Items You May Need First

Wait.

Before rushing out to buy your brand new, shiny business phone solution, you may want to consider picking up a few extra items.

The extra add-on hardware that you buy for your business equipment can be a game changer.

It’s no different when it comes to all the useful bells and whistles you can purchase for your office phones.

I recommend you at least look into adding some, if not all of these items to your business phone purchase.

Additional Docking Stations – If your phone system happens to have wireless handsets, having multiple docking stations around the office is definitely something I recommend you look into. If your handsets are constantly dead from being passed around from one worker to the next, multiple docking stations spread throughout the building may just be what you need.

Signal Repeaters – If you have workers in your place of business who are a large distance away from a strong wireless signal, you should invest in a signal repeater. If your office building is large or has a lot of walls or wiring, it can be hard for a wireless signal to find its way to your employee. This is a real problem for many businesses and can severely affect your employees’ ability to do their job efficiently. What signal repeaters do is take the wireless signal and boost or amplify it to help strengthen the signal that your employees are receiving.

Headsets – There is nothing quite like the luxury of going hands-free. Especially if your telephone system doesn’t support that feature by default. Headsets can give your employees the ability to multitask better by allowing them to go hands-free. Or rather, put their hands to good use while staying on the phone with that one really important client you are trying to land for the business.

The Avaya 1600 Series line of IP desk business phones deliver basic yet reliable communication.

In addition, they come equipped with several convenient digital features at a reasonable price.

A lot of the features that these business phones pack are often only found in higher-priced phone systems.

With the Avaya 1600 Series, you can give your employees the ease of use they are used to from more traditional IP-phones. And with the ease of use comes easy to read backlit display, high-quality full-duplex speakerphone, and bright LED buttons.

If you are looking for a line of business phones that are dependable and familiar, you can’t go wrong with the Avaya 1600 Series.

Key Features:

The Cisco SPA303 is a small step down from the SPA500 series of business phones. If you are a small business owner who needs reliability but doesn’t want to spend over $100 on a phone unit.

The Cisco SPA303 is the phone you want. This telephone comes with 3 lines, a 2-port switch and a bright monochrome LCD display.

You can use SIP or SPCP with this device and is supported on the Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series.

What’s really neat is that with the SPA303, users can access their Cisco Unity Express voicemail box right from the phones LCD display.

Oh, and security is a feature that this phone takes seriously. With this telephone, you can rest assured that all of your communications are secure as it boasts up to 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standards (AES)

Key Features

Supports 3 lines

Can connect to an IP private branch exchange (PBX)

Dual-switch Ethernet ports

Caller ID, call hold, mute, drop and conferencing

Speakerphone

Support for both SIP and SPCP with the Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series

Best Office Phone Systems Choose Wisely

No matter which business phone you choose to go with, make sure that it is the right one for you and your employees.

Not every phone on this list will suit every person’s needs. Still, they all do offer what I believe to be 3 of the absolute most important things you need to have on any good business phone.

These three things are:

Clear audio – If the person on the other end cannot hear you clearly or you can’t hear them clearly, then you need a different device. Clear, understandable communication is the entire game here.

Durability – Yes, the phone unit(s) will probably remain on a desk in an office. But hey, things do get knocked off desks all the time. And what about if you mount it on the wall? Do you really want to have to worry about a clumsy employee or maybe even yourself accidently breaking that $400 investment? Whichever phone you choose, it needs to be able to take some “wear and tear”.

…and most importantly, Security. We live in the 21st century now and cyber criminals run amok. Settle for nothing less than industry standard protection. Choose a phone with at least AES encryption.

All of the business phones that we have looked at in this article come with, at the very least, those 3 main features. Anything that you choose to add on to your telephone solution outside of that really will depend on your specific needs.

I hope this shines some light on the confusing task of choosing the right business equipment. This guide should help you take these comparisons and make the right choice for your business telephone solution.

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